The Winter Glass

Part III: Fading From Autumn Afternoons

Chapter Eight: Swift Endings

There is something about the light in autumn that makes me wish for times past. I don't know why this is--I don't know why the color of the sky should make me so nostalgic. I only know that the angle of the sun leaves my body in the same place it has always been but it takes my mind far away from wherever I am. I can picture that light in my head any time of year, but I cannot ever remember the way summer looks. I cannot remember summer. When I was with Harry, we lived far enough north that summer made little impression on the land and I have few memories of the endless, southern summers of my youth. Perhaps it was so warm then that there was no trouble to be made.

I do remember the next autumn. The leaves were bright that year, brilliantly bright. Gold, scarlet, plum, and bronze leaves, with the rare green bit mixed in, swirled down from the trees to cover the ground at Dumbledore's cottage. The children scooped armfuls into towering piles and jumped in, repeating the process again and again. Pip would snap his jaws at the falling leaves, though he did not chase them with the vigor of youth. Bushels of apples cooled in the cellar, and in baskets in the shade; their sharp, crisp scent competed with the smoke from pumpkin lanterns. And, at night, an orange moon hung low on the horizon.

Dumbledore took over the children's tutoring that year. I had oft come to find him with his hands over his eyes, rubbing them or pressing his fingertips to the sockets. He did not complain, yet he would no longer meet my eyes, and stumbled occasionally in dim light. I think he did not wish to acknowledge that his vision was failing him. He would sit before the fire with a quilt tucked over his lap and ask me to read to him. I'd finished copying all of the books over the summer and they had been sent away, so there was no more of that work to be done, but Dumbledore always had some piece of correspondence that he did not wish to write himself. Much of it was in a code of sorts--at least, the contents of the missives seemed to have a second meaning beyond the surface. Dumbledore did not share the key with me, and I did not ask it of him.

When he was feeling well enough, he would call the children in. The traveling scholars visited only sporadically for several years. There was a general grumbling that the common child would receive no education, and so it was that a rotating group of children of Harry's acquaintance visited and listened to lessons. Always, Hermione and Ron were there. The other Weasley children were the next most frequent visitors. I sometimes thought that Harry and Ginny had planned tricks, because they looked as though they were about to catch one another's eye--though, one or the other would look away just before the other looked back. I was certain then that the night I had heard Harry out on the leads with Ginny had been an innocent one.

Dumbledore settled his disciples at his feet, and spoke at length about matters of philosophy, physics, and psychology. His knowledge of the world and the people in it was both broad and deep. He always managed to lighten even the darkest tale with some interesting or adventurous anecdote, and I myself was as enthralled as his students were.

What truly amazed me was that Harry could recreate these stories for children who hadn't been there. In the late part of the morning, when Dumbledore was at his second breakfast, Harry would commandeer the bench in the garden and hold court. Where his father had dispensed judgment, Harry dispensed wisdom. When I had been busy with matters of quills and parchment I would often find cause to be in the garden the next morning just to hear the lesson of the last day.

Although (as I said before) Harry was well-liked and surrounded by his peers whenever they could manage it, he kept himself apart in several respects. It seemed to me that he had only Ron and Hermione as confidants. He would still come to me with problems and questions, but I had the feeling that he was saving his most private thoughts as he had not before. Sometimes he would stare into the pale sky as if he were in another land or saw something the rest of us could not. He also liked to be alone in the afternoon, just after Ron and Hermione would walk into town for their supper; he spent the time immersed in Dumbledore's library. Not even that great man could strike up a lengthy conversation with Harry when he lit a candle and selected a book from Dumbledore's collection. Harry explained it away with a desire to know more history than the other children were interested in hearing.

A false summer settled in for nearly a week before true autumn took hold. After that, rain fell steadily for a fortnight and I couldn't make my way through the mud until the first frost hardened the ground. Dumbledore had gone away in the meantime. A note was nailed to the door with instructions for preparing the house for winter. I thought of the heavy rain and hoped that he had not got stuck in some lonely locale. I later regretted that I did not get the chance to say goodbye, as I did not see him ever again.

One afternoon, while I was fitting old rags into gaps in the attic, winter came early. The almanac said that we should have another fifty days before the solstice. As there were no windows in the attic, I thought nothing of the darkness until after I had pushed the last cloth into a space where the floorboards did not meet perfectly and my candle guttered out. I realized that I'd been at my task longer than I intended to be, if I'd burned the last of it.

There was nothing except the dark. I could not feel how large or small the room was; I only had the vague feeling that there was a hole in the floor, and that if I was not careful I would be going through it without the aid of a ladder. On hands and knees, I crawled carefully down to Dumbledore's bedroom, and from there I fumbled down the short stairs that stopped on the main level. There was no warning of wind, but gloomy twilight remained under threatening clouds.

My feet broke through the thin layer of snow as I hurried back to town. I was caught out without enough overclothes for safety, and I remembered a sudden storm long ago that had stranded Harry and me inside--what would happen if I were to be caught out in one of the same?

Though I was worried I seemed to be in the minority. As I came over the last rise I saw that the town's youth had found their sledges (or something to pass, such as washtubs and scraps of wood). The going was not so good for the smallest, who rolled over on their short downhill trips. The older children sneaked behind wagons and their good-natured drivers pretended not to notice that they pulled another rider along behind.

The first child I recognized was Ginny. Her red hair spilled out from under one of her brothers' caps, and she stood to one side, eyes on the proceedings. I followed the line of her gaze to Harry, tumbling into the snow with Ron as his sledge overturned. They lay there in the snow for a moment too long, and I was seized with the urge to run to them and check for broken bones, but before I did anything rash the pair were on their feet again, pink-cheeked and pelting each other with snowballs.

I heard a hiss in the snow behind me, and I stepped to one side of the track. Now, of course, I wish I'd turned to look; as it was, I only saw it from the back. A magnificent sleigh pulled by two pure white horses whizzed by just behind me and down into the hollow. Even my untrained eye recognized that the sleigh, sleek and midnight-black, was made of the finest materials. I wracked my brain, unable to think of anyone in our remote, cramped town who could own such a thing. The sleigh came to a halt near Ginny, and the driver spoke to her.

By now, the other children had noticed the sleigh. They stopped their games, dropped their snowballs, and got up from their sledges, watching the newcomer warily. I strained my ears, but could not hear the conversation.

Finally, a boy broke ranks and stepped forward with his sled as if he would tie it on to the back of the sleigh for a ride just as Ginny took a startled step backward. The driver cracked his whip and the horses sprang forward. In a moment, they were gone in the swirling snow. A murmur went around the children, and they were soon at play again.

I tramped through the ever-thickening snow and down the hill. Ron, Harry, and even Hermione came to greet me, and we planned together to have a cup of chocolate and some biscuits to warm up. As we went down the lane, we met some of the other Weasley children. As a group we went down to Ginny, who had not moved from her spot.

"Did that driver say something?" Ron asked her, but he was interrupted.

One of the older brothers--I forget their names, there were so many--grabbed her hand with a gasp. He held up her mitten. The wool was wet and icy, but that was not what concerned him. A red bloom marred the white knit and spread down to her wrist. "What's this?" he asked, removing the mitten and holding her little hand in his. "You've cut yourself?"

"It's an old cut," she said, pulling away and putting her hand in a pocket. She said no more, not even to protest when the brother carried her pig-back all the way home, lecturing her about how to keep the cut from becoming infected.

Once back in our rooms, I excused myself to change out of my wet clothes. My teeth chattered so that I thought they would fall out of my head, and for a moment I stretched out on the bed, exhausted. It was my undoing. Suddenly, Harry was shaking me, slapping me across the face. "Wake up!"

"I'm not asleep," I said. It took a long time to say; my lips weren't working very well.

Harry looked at me with concern. "You didn't answer, and..." He handed me my trousers with a look of embarrassment. "Chocolate's ready. It's warmer in the other room. Join us?"

I nodded and he backed out of the room. I dressed myself with difficulty. The buttons were the hardest. I forced my fingers to work. When I was decent again, I shivered my way into sociability. "There's biscuits in"--I coughed--"the tin." I took it down from the mantel and passed it along, keeping close to the fire.

"Did you see it?" Ron asked.

Hermione continued for him. "The sleigh. It was quite something, wasn't it?"

I turned around to warm up the other side. "Quite. I don't know how the driver got away without a half-dozen sledges hitching on."

Harry snorted. "It wouldn't be very good sledding."

"How would you know?" Ron asked, more curious than confrontational.

"It didn't look right...the sleigh was wrong." He shook his head, going on once our silence became too lengthy. "There weren't any bells."

"That's silly," Hermione admonished him, "and I should think you could come up with a better reason. Why should it have had sleigh bells? Wasn't it fine enough?"

Harry didn't answer her. Instead, he sulked into his mug. At last, he drained it and wandered to the window. "The roses should be covered. I wonder why the snow is so early."

There was a knock at the door. "That'll be Dad, come to make sure we get home safely." Ron and Hermione finished their chocolate and started bundling up as Harry answered the door. However, our visitor wasn't Arthur Weasley.

A burly man held up his hand, caught in mid-knock. "'Ello," he said, and we responded in kind. He took off his cap, belatedly, and twisted it between his hands. "There's a crowd of us meeting down in the street. A lot of kids are missing--haven't come in yet, and we're going out to bring 'em in."

The children jumped to their feet. "No," I said tiredly, "stay here until someone comes to take you home." I layered on clothes, gloves, cloak, and a scarf, but was cold by the time I passed through to the hallway and followed the man outside.

Another few men, wrapped from head to toe, stamped their feet and blew hazy clouds of steam out from under scarves. "That's all we've got," said one, muffled by a balaclava as he accepted a torch from another. "Let's go."

Cold pulled my shoulders up tight and my arms in tighter. I risked a fall to keep my hands under my cloak until I could feel them no more--after that, it didn't matter. The walk through the darkness was interminable. The only sound was our boots crunching across the snow and the hissing and popping of the torches.

The torches shrank and wavered before my eyes. I thought I saw light where there was none, and wandered off the path. I realized that I wasn't following well when I staggered to the side and ended up knee-deep in a drift of snow.

One of the others dropped back. "All right there, mate?"

"Fine," I replied, shaking his hand off my shoulder. "I tripped over something. Let's move on."

Once we made the little rise where the sledding had taken place, we split into groups of two and three and threaded our way through the pine trees that ringed the hollow. My companion and I ended up in the garden of a little cottage, and though we had searched all the area, we found nothing. We struggled back through the snow to the search party and came upon an awful sight.

The man who had come to bring me along was prostrate on the ground, crying great, howling sobs into an indifferent sky. He cradled a figure in his arms, and even at a distance it was clear that it was lifeless.

On closer inspection, he held a boy who must have been his son. They had the same golden curls; they had the same clear, blue eyes. The boy's were sightless and staring, frozen open above a frost-blackened visage. There was nothing that could have been done for the boy. No fire would thaw him again.

I stalked back and forth in the snow. I was cold and all the more callous for it. The boy was dead from the weather and there was no turning back the clock--if there was grieving to be done, could it not be done somewhere warmer? My nose ran, my throat burned and I was alternately gripped with heat and chills.

At long last we hiked back to town, the man's wailing bringing watchers to the windows who looked with curious eyes before covering those of their children. While the other searchers chose an inn for a late supper, I hurried home.

"Any ch-chocolate left?" I asked as I shook the snow from my cloak.

Harry looked up from his book. While I'd been gone, Ron and Hermione had departed. "There's tea on." He brought me a cup as I toed off my boots--I was too chilled to bother with the rest. I stretched my limbs toward the fire, wishing I could put them in the flames. Maybe then I'd feel them again.

"I have a question to ask," Harry said, sitting down and flipping through pages he'd been reading. "It's about--"

"We found the boy," I answered him. "He froze to death."

Harry closed the book soberly. "Was he lost? How..."

"I don't know. His father was very upset." I was at a loss to explain how a child could have frozen so quickly when he should have been warm from playing hard. I was at a loss to explain how a child could be lost in trees no more than ten feet thick at their densest growth, and when twenty paces on short legs would have brought him to a home on the outskirts of town. "Promise me you'll stay in, where it's warm."

Harry didn't like this, I could tell, but he agreed. "Unless I have to go out." Half-agreement. Enough for now. He held up the book, hesitated a moment, then tucked it under his arm and went off to bed.